Everything Everywhere All at Once is a 2022 American absurdist comedy-drama film written and directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively known as "Daniels"), who produced it with Anthony and Joe Russo. The film's plot focuses on a Chinese-American immigrant (played by Michelle Yeoh) who, while being audited by the IRS, discovers that she must connect with parallel universe versions of herself to prevent a powerful being from destroying the multiverse. Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., James Hong, and Jamie Lee Curtis appear in supporting roles. The New York Times called the film a "swirl of genre anarchy" with elements of black comedy, science fiction, fantasy, martial arts films, and animation.
Kwan and Scheinert had researched the concept of the multiverse as far back as 2010, and began penning the screenplay by 2016 around the release of their previous film, Swiss Army Man. Originally written for Jackie Chan, the lead role was later reworked and offered to Yeoh. Principal photography ran from January to March 2020. The film's soundtrack features music composed by Son Lux, including collaborations with musicians Mitski, David Byrne, André 3000, and Randy Newman.
Everything Everywhere All at Once had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 11, 2022, and commenced a limited theatrical release in the United States on March 25, 2022, before a wide release by A24 two weeks later, on April 8. It grossed over $103 million worldwide, becoming A24's first film to cross the $100 million mark and surpassing Hereditary (2018) as its highest-grossing film.
Generally considered as one of the best films of 2022, it received widespread critical acclaim for its imagination, visual effects, humor, direction, editing, acting, and handling of themes such as existentialism, nihilism, and Asian-American identity. Organizations such as the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute named it one of the top ten films of 2022. The film received six nominations at the 80th Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy and Best Director.
Plot[]
| Spoiler Warning: The following contains important plot details of the entire film. |
In China, Evelyn Quan Wang falls in love with Waymond Wang and, against her father's objections, elopes to the United States. The couple open a laundromat and have a daughter, Joy. Years later, the laundromat is being audited by the IRS. Waymond is trying to serve Evelyn divorce papers, Evelyn's demanding father Gong Gong is visiting, and Joy wants her mother to accept her non-Chinese girlfriend Becky, who Evelyn will not be truthful about with Gong Gong.
At a fractious meeting with IRS inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdre, Waymond's body is briefly taken over by Alpha-Waymond, a version of Waymond from the "Alphaverse". Alpha-Waymond explains to Evelyn that many parallel universes exist as every life choice creates a new universe. The Alphaverse, led by the late Alpha-Evelyn, developed "verse-jumping" technology, which enables people to access the skills, memories and bodies of their parallel-universe selves by performing bizarre actions. The multiverse is now threatened by Jobu Tupaki, the Alphaverse version of Joy, whose mind was splintered after Alpha-Evelyn pushed her to extensively verse-jump. Jobu now experiences all universes at once and can verse-jump and manipulate matter at will; she has created a black hole-like "everything bagel" that threatens the multiverse.
Evelyn is given verse-jumping technology to fight Jobu's verse-jumping minions, who are now converging on the IRS building. She discovers other universes where she made different choices and flourished, such as becoming a kung fu master or a movie star, while also learning of Waymond's plans for divorce. Alpha-Waymond believes Evelyn, as the greatest failure of all Evelyns in the multiverse, has the untapped potential to defeat Jobu. Alpha-Gong Gong, controlling Evelyn's Gong Gong, instructs her to kill Joy to stop Jobu from entering her universe, but Evelyn instead decides to face Jobu by gaining powers through repeated verse-jumping. While Evelyn is chased by Alpha-Gong Gong's soldiers, Jobu locates and kills Alpha-Waymond in the Alphaverse. As Jobu confronts Evelyn, Evelyn's mind splinters just as Jobu's has.
Evelyn momentarily dies, ending part 1. However, like Jobu, her consciousness cannot die now. Her consciousness travels across the other universes. Eventually, she is able to channel her spirit into her dead body and resurrect herself, beginning part 2.
Evelyn's detached consciousness begins to verse-jump across bizarre diverse universes alongside Jobu. Rather than fight, Jobu explains that she has been searching for an Evelyn who can come to believe, as she does, that nothing matters. She brings Evelyn to the everything bagel, explaining that she hopes it can allow her to finally die. Upon peering into the bagel, Evelyn is persuaded and begins to act nihilistically in the other universes, emotionally hurting those around her.
Evelyn is about to enter the bagel with Jobu and end all her multiverse lives but pauses upon hearing Waymond's pleas for everybody to stop fighting and be kind. Evelyn has an epiphany and follows his advice by using her multiverse powers to find what is hurting those around her and bring them happiness. In doing so, she repairs her damage in the other universes and neutralizes Alpha-Gong Gong and Jobu's fighters. In her home universe, Evelyn tells Gong Gong of Joy and Becky's relationship, talks with Deirdre after Waymond convinces her to let them redo their taxes, and reconciles with Waymond. Jobu tries to end her life by entering the bagel while, simultaneously as Joy in Evelyn's universe, begging Evelyn to let her go. Evelyn says that even if she could be anywhere else, she would always want to be with Joy. Evelyn and the others save Jobu from the bagel, and Evelyn and Joy embrace.
Some time later, with the family's relationships improved, Evelyn and her family return to the IRS building to refile their taxes. As Deirdre talks, Evelyn's attention is momentarily drawn to her alternate selves and the multiverse before she grounds herself back in her home universe.
Cast[]
- Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Quan Wang, a dissatisfied and overwhelmed laundromat owner; and as several other versions of Evelyn in alternate universes.
- Stephanie Hsu as Joy Wang, Evelyn's daughter; and Jobu Tupaki, Alpha-Evelyn's omnicidal daughter and a threat to the multiverse.
- Ke Huy Quan as Waymond Wang, Evelyn's meek husband; and as Alpha-Waymond, from the Alphaverse; and other versions of Waymond in alternate universes.
- James Hong as Gong Gong (Chinese 公公, "maternal grandfather"), Evelyn's demanding father; and Alpha-Gong Gong, Alpha-Evelyn's father in the Alphaverse.
- Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre Beaubeirdre, an IRS inspector; and as several other versions of Deirdre in alternate universes.
- Jenny Slate as Debbie the Dog Mom, a laundromat customer.
- Harry Shum Jr. as Chad, a teppanyaki chef working alongside an alternative Evelyn in another universe.
- Tallie Medel as Becky Sregor, Joy's girlfriend
Additionally, Biff Wiff appears as Rick, a laundromat customer; Sunita Mani and Aaron Lazarappear as actors in a musical film Evelyn watches; Audrey Wasilewski and Peter Banifaz appear as Alpha RV Officers; Daniel Scheinert appears as District Manager; and Andy Le and Brian Le appear as Alpha Trophy Jumpers.
Randy Newman, who has scored nine Disney–Pixar films as of this film's release, appears in an uncredited role as the voice of Raccacoonie, a reference to Pixar's animated film Ratatouille (2007); he is credited as a featured artist on the track "Now We're Cookin'". Dan Kwan has uncredited cameos as a man sucked into the bagel and a mugger.
Production[]
Development and writing[]
Co-directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert began researching the concept of the multiverse as early as 2010, after being exposed to the concept of modal realism in the documentary Sherman's March (1986). Kwan described the release of the animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), which also deals with a multiversal concept, as "a little upsetting because we were like, 'Oh shit, everyone's going to beat us to this thing we've been working on.'" He also stated: "Watching the second season of Rick and Morty was really painful. I was like, 'They've already done all the ideas we thought were original!' It was a really frustrating experience. So I stopped watching Rick and Morty while we were writing this project."
In early drafts of the screenplay, the directors planned for the main character to have undiagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); through his research for the project, Kwan learned that he himself had undiagnosed ADHD.
The alternate universe in which Evelyn trains in martial arts and becomes an action film star features scenes visually and contextually inspired by the films of Wong Kar-wai; Chris Lee of Vulture writes that these scenes "conjur[e] a mood of exquisite romantic yearning that will be instantly recognizable [...] as touchstones" of Wong's works. The universe in which Evelyn and Joy are rocks was influenced by the children's book Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (1969) and the video game Everything (2017).
According to Kwan, the idea of the everything bagel "started as just a throwaway joke". Scheinert noted that they spent time attempting to develop the religion of bagel followers, but encountered complications: "[Jobu Tupaki]'s a nihilist; should there be dogma? Should there be a book? What should their practices be as a religion? The bagel stuck because it became such a useful, simple symbol that we could point to as filmmakers. And you don't have to explain it much beyond the joke."
Casting[]
During the film's pre-production, Jackie Chan was considered for the lead role; the script was originally written for him, before Kwan and Scheinert changed their minds and reconceived the role as a woman, feeling it would make the husband–wife dynamic in the story more relatable.
When the script was rewritten with a female protagonist, the character was initially named Michelle Wang; according to Michelle Yeoh, "If you ask the Daniels, when they started on this draft, they focused on, 'Well, we are doing this for Michelle Yeoh.'" The character's name was eventually changed to Evelyn. Despite the parallels in the final product between herself and the universe in which Evelyn is a martial artist and film star, Yeoh opposed naming the character Michelle because "Evelyn deserves her own story to be told. This is a very ordinary mother [and] housewife who is trying her best to be a good mother to her daughter, a good daughter to her father, a wife that's trying to keep the family together [...] I don't like to integrate me, Michelle Yeoh, into the characters that I play, because they all deserve their own journey and their stories to be told."
It was announced in August 2018 that Yeoh and Awkwafina had been cast to star in what was described as an "interdimensional action film" from Kwan and Scheinert, with Anthony and Joe Russo attached to produce. Awkwafina exited the project in January 2020 due to scheduling conflicts. Stephanie Hsu, James Hong, Ke Huy Quan, and Jamie Lee Curtis joined the cast, with Hsu replacing Awkwafina. It marked Quan's return to film acting, from which he had retired in 2002 due to a lack of casting opportunities.
Filming[]
Principal photography began in January 2020, with A24 announcing that it would finance and distribute the film. Much of the film was shot in Simi Valley, California. Within the film are multiple kung-fu fight scenes: The Daniels explain how normally one scene would take 2 to 3 weeks of filming particularly the fanny pack fight scene, but they were able to finish filming that scene in a day and a half. The entirety of filming took up to 38 days. Filming wrapped in early March 2020 during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.
Themes[]
Everything Everywhere All at Once incorporates elements from a number of genres and film mediums, including black comedy, science fiction, fantasy, martial arts films, and animation.A. O. Scott of The New York Times described the film as a "swirl of genre anarchy", explaining that "while the hectic action sequences and flights of science-fiction mumbo-jumbo are a big part of the fun (and the marketing), they aren't really the point. [The movie is] a bittersweet domestic drama, a marital comedy, a story of immigrant striving and a hurt-filled ballad of mother-daughter love."
The film explores the concepts of the meaning of life and nihilism; according to Charles Bramesco of The Guardian, "The bagel of doom and its tightening grip on Evelyn's daughter lend themselves to the climactic declaration that there's nothing worse than submitting to the nihilism so trendy with the next generation. Our lone hope of recourse is to embrace all the love and beauty surrounding us, if only we're present enough to see it." This nihilism is also incorporated into the film's exploration of Asian-American identity. Anne Anlin Cheng wrote in The Washington Post: "It's not only that the multiverse acts as a metaphor for the immigrant Asian American experience, or a convenient parable for the dislocations and personality splits suffered by hyphenated (that is, "Asian-American") citizens. It also becomes a rather heady vehicle for confronting and negotiating Asian-pessimism", a term she uses in reference to Afro-pessimism.
Consequence's Clint Worthington wrote that "for all its dadaist absurdism and blink-if-you-miss-it pace, Daniels weaves the chaotic possibilities into the multiverse into a cohesive story about the aches and pains of the road not traveled, and the need to carve out your own meaning in a meaningless universe". Describing Jobu Tupaki's modus operandi, Worthington notes "the living contradiction that is the everything bagel: if you put everything on a bagel, what more is left? And if you've experienced everything that the multiverse can offer, what's the point of any of it?" Kwan said that the everything bagel concept "did two things. It allowed us to talk about nihilism without being too eye roll-y. And it creates a MacGuffin: a doomsday device. If in the first half of the movie, people think that the bagel is here to destroy the world, and in the second half you realize it's a depressed person trying to destroy themselves, it just takes everything about action movies and turns it into something more personal."
The film engages textually and metatextually with the "real world" of the viewer. Critics have noted that one version of Evelyn—a famous martial arts movie star—is a portrayal of Yeoh herself, that Ke Huy Quan's experience as a stunt coordinator is used diegetically in Waymond's fight scenes, and that James Hong's transformation into "a more sinister, English-fluent, Machiavellian strategist" parallels his character Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little China (1986).
Release[]
Everything Everywhere All at Once had its world premiere at the South by Southwest film festival on March 11, 2022. It then received a limited release in theaters on March 25, 2022, followed by a nationwide release on April 8, in the United States by A24. On March 30, 2022, the film was released in select IMAX theaters in the U.S. for one night only. Due to its popularity, the film returned to select IMAX theaters for one week starting on April 29, 2022. The film was not released in most parts of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, due to censorship of LGBT issues in those countries. The film was released in the United Kingdom on May 13, 2022. The film was scheduled to be re-released in U.S. theaters on July 29, 2022, unchanged but adding an introduction by the Daniels and eight minutes of outtakes after the credits.
Box office[]
Everything Everywhere All at Once has grossed $70 million in the United States and Canada and $33.1 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $103.1 million. In the process, the film became the highest-grossing released by A24, surpassing 2018's Hereditary.
Critical reception[]
The film received universal critical acclaim upon release. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 95% based on 344 reviews, with an average rating of 8.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "Led by an outstanding Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once lives up to its title with an expertly calibrated assault on the senses." On August 26, 2022, Rotten Tomatoes users voted Everything Everywhere All At Once as "A24's Best Film of All Time" in their A24 Showdown, winning 59% to runner-up Hereditary's 41% vote. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 81 out of 100, based on 54 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by PostTrak gave it an 89% positive score, with 77% saying that they would definitely recommend it.
Videos[]
